Buddhism

Woebot

Well-known member
seeing as how it occupies a considerable amount of my thought.

best to start what's wrong with it.

it's massively confused! - so incredibly antique that its strategies have become almost wholly contradictory. like chinese (indian?) whispers down the ages.

my theory is that around 1000 AD it got folded back into the older models Bon, Taoism and the Vedanta. it's well-documented that the Buddha was a reformer of the Vedas - and that as a method it is essentially about the positive ego and integration - but that this was gradually corrupted to the degree that almost no-one understands this any more. even the "Anatta" doctrine to my my mind - so crucial to Buddhism is in my view a Vedic corruption - straight out of the Hindu playbook.

my view (and this is born out by a respectable amount of scholarly research) is that the Buddha understood all the psychic higher-order stuff but took the sensible perspective that to acknowledge it didn't mean one had to be fixated on it. it seems like very few people get this aspect of the middle way.

Tibetan Buddhism, Zen Buddhism do tend to be all about the annihilation of the ego.

the Hinyana "little vehicle" - gets a lot of stick for cleaving to the Pali canon (which is the most antique transcriptions of the buddha's words) - where the Mahayana "greater vehicle" makes sense as a method for not just understanding what the Buddha said, but crucially, what his life represented. so while the Hinyana makes a mistake with its monastic idea of the arhat (the Buddha was not some guy stuck on his own in a monastery) the Mahayana nails it with the concept of the bodhisattva (the person who passes over his own release into nirvana to help other sentient beings)

in my view - Tenzin Gyatso the current 14th Dalai Lama - although he emerges from Tibetan Buddhism absolutely smashes it with his unswerving emphasis on compassion. on kindness. he is a really magnificent fellow. (even if sometimes i think that he overemphasizes the importance of nagarjuna's ideas which are a bit like Heidegger - nothing has its own essence - nonsense! - and broadly silly)
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I have not much to offer but a solid source - Ben Joffe is a scholar of Tibetan and he writes exhaustive fascinating blogposts on the history of Tibetan Buddhism and it's intersection with popular culture, here: https://perfumedskull.com/

I think you're right in that South Asian religions are geographically promiscuous and there's huge interplay between Buddhism and HInduism. I think it's probably too complex to describe this as a singular process though.
 

Woebot

Well-known member
I have not much to offer but a solid source - Ben Joffe is a scholar of Tibetan and he writes exhaustive fascinating blogposts on the history of Tibetan Buddhism and it's intersection with popular culture, here: https://perfumedskull.com/
thanks danny will check that out
I think you're right in that South Asian religions are geographically promiscuous and there's huge interplay between Buddhism and HInduism. I think it's probably too complex to describe this as a singular process though.
it's a big continuum defintely
 

Woebot

Well-known member
here's that man you link being interviewed


BUT @DannyL man this is such a minefield! :eek:

i did see some of these extremely political fights at this place:

also at the reddit buddhist forum

but i kinda shunted them to the back of my mind (which is easy to do when you are just looking at old books)

here's some poor fellow being taken down on the basis of his public claims 😬

 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I've listened to that interview - he does two episodes. I don't recall it being especially controversial?!
The reason I like him is not only that he's a thoughtful writer but he's got contacts with the Tibetan community and works to honour that connection. That's what his fieldwork is about IIRC (discussed in the podcast).

Quite amusing to think of Buddhists slugging it out I guess. But it was ever thus.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I met some Tibetan Buddhists when I was in India. I stayed in Dharamsala for a few weeks. I was very impressed with one guy I talked to, who told me in broken English about being tortured by the Chinese. He said he felt sorry for them, being trapped in all that aggression and he genuinely seemed to bear no grievance.
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
A subject I’ve thought about for discussion and never clicked the submit button due to ignorance

Even a dilettante can negotiate the Noble Truths as pin perfect notes of wisdom, yet they survive as human world-views for a reason. Not growing up in a Buddhist environment, occasionally you get lucky at the right time in life in terms of reading, or an older friend giving you a nudge in the right direction

Christianity may be on the way out, but it had a remorselessly insidious presence as a youth. Forgiveness and compassion are noble goals except with institutionalised mores they get encoded and subsumed in peculiarities like transubstantiation, weird rituals and a clergy with questionable ethics

The longer I’ve worked in the field of addiction and post-traumatic growth, the more these noble truths resonate back from people who aren’t necessarily practising Buddhists but who intuit their rationales from both innocence and experience, articulating these landmarks like features on a map
 

polystyle

Well-known member
Hear you Matthew

By the time i got onto Buddhism as an interest, a way of life and place to go -
and meditating on a white cloud that was passing over Tompkins Square park one early afternoon - i began reckoning with all of old history into ancien.
The early Buddhism and how it moved from one place to another.
i got hooked on the early part.
As some of the later ' advice ' or blessing quotes , well i was just not there yet.

This book was and is resource ' Ancient Tibet Research Materials from The Yeshe De Project , from Dharma Publishing 1986

Where one goes back to when the monkey got together w the human and original tribes of ape, men, sorcerers.

So then Bon became a pre occupation !
Having only met one and that was on the old Kali Gandaki River as the wind was turning to flow back up from India through the Himal >
She invited us to her village, not far away.
We stood in the wind and blinding sun.

I should have gone but we didn't, we went on down river to next night's stay, Jomsom.

That whole area around and South of Mt Kailas might be fascinating still - even now dried out and dead.
So then the old dry desert of Western Tibet became where the threads of Buddhism mingled w others there on Silk Road.

Of course , it is not always easy to see the way clear - we are looking back on the small number of documents, book saved from those old water logged libraries like the one the British found is now called ' far West China'

I have a couple articles from Japan for ya M
 

catalog

Well-known member
that book sounds good - does it have stuff on apes -> men then? My fave God is Hanuman

hanuman-evolution-faith.jpg
 

polystyle

Well-known member
Matt

Agreed on the current Dalai Lama, such a presence he provides balance.
Did see him speak at Central Park once, it was wonderful thing to behold.
And he held the crowd with his friendliness and his happiness.
When he goes it will be some ... thing.

It's a real shame what happened to Tibet.
There is still some old Buddha there along the winding river canyon villages.
And when i trekked Western Nepal by 2000 there were quite a few Bon temples, small villages remaining as we were not far from the Nepal - Tibet border there.
You see the backwards swastika mark the map for the Bon temples.

Buddhism must have gotten spread into Tibet from the South West,
with Bon already being there since apes began to talk right ?

The Tibet history books tells of 12 tribes of ancient Tibet
an unceasing array of people, monkey people, near people, ogres,
ages where sorcerers ruled cruelly until they met their own ends.

Sons of kings, cross marriages,
feudal into cross patch outposts from India into Tibet and Western China,
Central Asia and Chinese Turkestan.
Old library of the Tokharians half flooded smelling of wet books
pieces of the first millenium A.D.
 

Woebot

Well-known member
The longer I’ve worked in the field of addiction and post-traumatic growth, the more these noble truths resonate back from people who aren’t necessarily practising Buddhists but who intuit their rationales from both innocence and experience, articulating these landmarks like features on a map
it's a massive presence in the therapy community i know. that buddha statue in a psychoanalyst's office is an art director's cliche on tv shows 😂

our @DannyL is deep in this world so i'm not surprised to see him here
 
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Woebot

Well-known member
that book sounds good - does it have stuff on apes -> men then? My fave God is Hanuman

hanuman-evolution-faith.jpg
i think we need a Hinduism thread for Hanuman!

 
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Woebot

Well-known member
When he goes it will be some ... thing.
very cool to have seen him. it will be. he's maybe the most significant living link to pre-industrial civilisation too.

this definitely worth checking out re: Tibetan Buddhism

 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
it's a massive presence in the therapy community i know. that buddha statue in a psychoanalyst's office is an art director's cliche on tv shows 😂

our @DannyL is deep in this world so i'm not surprised to see him here
I have a long standing interest (and practice) related to Indian religions as well - I'm such a cliche sometimes - but like Smashy and Nicey's work for charity, "I don't like to talk about it"
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
it's a massive presence in the therapy community i know. that buddha statue in a psychoanalyst's office is an art director's cliche on tv shows 😂
But not usually this kind of Buddha:

emaciated_buddha.jpg

which seems to be a remarkable parallel evolution to the suffering Christ seen in Catholic iconography.
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
it's a massive presence in the therapy community i know. that buddha statue in a psychoanalyst's office is an art director's cliche on tv shows 😂

our @DannyL is deep in this world so i'm not surprised to see him here

Abhidharma is an intersection of sorts. It’s so on the mark for inquiries into consciousness, not to put the emphasis on science but clearly extended periods of observation (which is surely evidence-based?)
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Idk - is he suffering? What's the story behind that?
Oh yeah, big time - it represents a phase of his life in which he practiced extreme asceticism, starving himself almost to death, before realising that this is not in fact the route to enlightenment.

 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
Maybe he was depressed, gf had left, rumours of cheating, messy split. He hit the pipe hard. Permastoned. Then the poppy. People were concerned - oh Buddha fancy a feast? He's just sat under this tree all day, nodding out, off his tits while the fake friends push him deeper. Not like there are chores in daily life, eh bad Buddha. Big entourage. Cliquey crowd. Enablers. Fickle. Then he twigged - they're all cunts, i've got to eat better, wtf are this lot thinking i should've starved myself of compassion and fun - and he Became
 
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